Sapa, Vietnam

Well i arrived into Sapa early on Tuesday 28th after my first night train. The night train was interesting, i shared with an English guy which was good until a Vietnamese women arrived (who looked well over 9 months pregnant - so we were pleased she never gave birth during the train journey) unfortunately she stank of fish which made the evening a bit grim.

I managed to get a few hours sleep on and off during the night which was useful as I started the first days trekking starting at 1700m trekking to 2200m for lunch and then onto 2800m for evening meal and sleep. The trekking was not all up hill which was good i suppose but you knew for ever step you went down you would have to reclimb it again to get to the peak of the mountain.

When we arrived to the camp at 2800m i was pretty tired so I just chilled with a cup of tea (so English), however when the sun started to go away the cold set in and oh my god was it cold!!! I slept in all my clothes including two pairs of socks, tea shirt, fleece and rain jacket, and i was still shirvering all night. I managed to get a maximum of about 2 hours sleep over all before we had to get up at 5am to get ready to climb to the peak.

The first 30 mins of the trek on that day was down hill - I was getting annoyewd with everystep i had to go downwards as i had to go back up it again anyway. So i arrived at the peak at 8.30am and the view was pretty impressive even if it was slightly cloudy and i got some photos from the top. I should have shecked the photos the guide took of me as i am kneeling next to the Fansipan sign but he did not get all the sign on so it looks like i climbed mountain pan!!

The same day we trekked back down to 2,200m camp for the night, it was a lot warmer athough still cold. From here we had a meal and drank some rice wine - which could have helped me to get a good nights sleep lol. When we got up at 6am we went onto trek for another 4 hours through the black Hmong tribe which was pretty cool and got to see what life was like for the tribe. I felt going down was tougher than going upwards at times as it was really steep and the guide and porter seem to be able to run down the mountain with ease - they even managed to walk down some ladders which had been put down in difficult positions forwards whilst i was struggling 30 metres behind.

The only real downside of the trek was the guide did not sleep to much English, in fact the only real phase he appeared to know was "are you tired?", in which I replied under my breath - " of course i am bloody tired i am walking a bloody mountain", out loud I said No of course! He was even cheekier when we got to the end of the trek as he suggested i gave the porter a tip (which i was going to do anyway) so i gave them 100,000 dong (5$) between them, which is a lot of money over here, and i have always been told to tip 1$ a day. He then said i should give them 300,000 which is a massive tip (cheeky ****) so i said to him it was 100,000 or nothing and he still proceeded to moan - so i gave him nothing so he has something to moan about now!!

I got back to the hotel and i have had a long shower and i feel a little bit back to reality, although my legs are really sore (knees and hips) i must be getting old! I am going to have a look around Sapa town and the market this afternoon before heading back to Hanoi on the night train.